News Flash: Blogging Requires A Compelling Narrative

07/08/2008 09:43 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

This rings all too true. Companies that get real value from social media put forward informal / conversational narratives from subject matter experts. Granted sometimes its hard to find geeks with the requisite communication skills, but when you do find them they should be out front. Once you get to multiple author blogging it feels [...]

Software Development: No Silver Bullets, But Plenty Of Gunslinging

07/08/2008 07:50 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Hank, one of my favorite dev reads, hits the nail on the head on manpower issues. The problem is that folks still think they can scale and grind. Get enough developers and, though less efficient, the scale moves operations forward. This strategy doesn’t work when individuals and small teams can dance circles around you and [...]

Transaction Costs Make Or Break Great Ideas

07/01/2008 05:32 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

I’ve long been a fan of Gary Vaynerchuck. He’s innovative and in many ways represents much of what is good about the new media / user generated content revolution. That’s why I was stoked to stumble on to Cork’d. I signed up for the service and immediately started kicking out my first wine review. However, during [...]

Gates Through Rose Colored Glasses

06/27/2008 10:33 pm by Brooks Andrus in Misc

I call bullshit. These are unprovable assertions based on purely imaginative history. The web has proven that cooperation and standards can emerge from billions of diverse voices. If anything TCP/IP probably had as much to do with where we’re at today as anything. Computers were just expensive word processors until the Web emerged. Most of [...]

The $300 Million Makeover

05/22/2008 05:26 pm by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Apparently for a cool $300 million you can get a bunch of avid Mac users to attempt to convince themselves that Microsoft is cool enough for them to give up their Apple. Article just emphasizes the perception problem MS has. It’s 6 pages, but the first page and a half and the last couple of [...]

More Is Often Less

05/20/2008 07:09 pm by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Keith says something I feel very strongly about, but how do you get business types to get out of the feature arms race? Lot’s of business folks still feel like its the bullet points that win product comparisons and sell upgrades, but do they help you create passionate users who love your products? I’m not [...]

Hysterical Microhoo! Analysis

05/20/2008 08:17 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Poached from TechCrunch comments (a rare gem). I must of had a mind-meld with this cat when I was reading this leaked internal memo.

Winning Hearts And Minds

05/20/2008 07:22 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Microsoft’s biggest problem these days isn’t technology, it’s ecosystem, or corporate strategy. Instead it has something far worse — a perception problem. There’s a ton of historical evidence — monkey boy, M$ (a slur used by geeks to describe corporate greed), Apple’s Mac vs PC (it wouldn’t be effective if the perception didn’t already exist), [...]

Will Nerd Conferences Survive?

05/19/2008 10:07 pm by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Seth Godin meet Aral Balkan and welcome to Singularity. Now that I’ve done my best as matchmaker I ask only one thing — please don’t take SXSW away from me. I mean, my god do I need nerd talk followed by long therapy sessions on 6th Street. …oh, and lest I forget — Aral you’re a bastard [...]

The 3rd Adobe London Poker Tournament

05/19/2008 03:08 am by infinite turtles in Misc

The 3rd Adobe sponsored London Poker Tournament is now open for registration at www.pokercoder.com. For those who haven’t been before, it’s a fantastic FREE event with beer, chips and prizes all provided. Dealers at your table will be giving everyone 20 minutes of training if you’ve never played before, although Adobe are making a point [...]

Can Microsoft Make WPF Successful?

05/14/2008 09:11 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Tim Sneath was surprisingly honest and refreshing with his post covering Microsoft’s latest release of WPF. It’s been interesting to watch Microsoft’s struggle to approach the rich experience application market with WPF. It appears they fundamentally misunderstood the market, their developer base and their ability to drive adoption. At least that’s the way it looks [...]

Twitter Yields First Fruits

05/12/2008 09:08 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Twitter has always seemed like one part silliness and two parts vanity. I’ve just never seen the value in it (I blame my advanced age). However, I’ve been more inclined to jump in as a listener of late. I don’t know what changed. Maybe my multitasking capabilities have just improved enough to add yet another [...]

Scaling Web Video / Services

05/12/2008 06:35 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Scaling is not my thing, but Greg Linden continues to be a great source to poach from. His post on Facebook’s database architecture included a link back to a video presentation of YouTube’s approach to scaling during their buildup.

There’s lots of good info here, but I was struck by a [...]

What Do Users Read / Hear? How Fast? How Much Do They Comprehend?

05/08/2008 09:08 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

I was doing a bit of research into my typing speed (turns out I’m average) and the Wikipedia article yielded some surprising additional data. This data dovetails into a Jakob Nielsen article on how much text users read that one of the project managers at work, Blake Nyquist, pointed me to. And of course there’s Kathy [...]

Man Crush Leads to Typing Test Addiction

05/08/2008 07:41 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

I’ve got a bit of a man crush on Rands. I witnessed a very entertaining presentation he gave at SXSW and then was overwhelmed by the insight of his handbook and glossary. He seems to be seems to be a bigger geek, a better writer and funnier than me — your basic nightmare (it’s the [...]

Influencers and Social Media

05/06/2008 06:36 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

I just stumbled on this Edelman white paper on social media which touches on some of aspects from my last post. The paper essentially breaks down 5 questions: How to appropriately gauge influence? What are the different types of influencers (starters, spreaders, adapters, commentators, readers)? Who do you market to - influencers or the readily influenced? What’s the breakout [...]

We Consume Information, But Where From?

05/05/2008 08:24 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

I’m looking sideways at Tim Bray. Almost sounds dirty or sneaky, but its actually a reference to one of the most important aspects of communication on the web — the greatest value is often personal and organic. Individuals rather than professional organizations can offer the most credible insights and the message is typically delivered organically [...]

Bob Costas, Luddites and the Death of Traditional Media

05/01/2008 07:08 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

After watching Buzz Bissinger’s melt down and Bob Costas’ ignorance and hubris last night on HBO’s Costas Now, I was tempted to let the fingers fly and hammer out a scathing indictment on their Luddite and elitist worldview. I passed on the immediate opportunity, but Sporting News did it for me, albeit with a gentler [...]

Social Surplus

04/29/2008 08:55 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

Clay Shirky’s got an interesting blog post related to the massive global economic and societal shifts underway as the result of the web’s unique blend of individual empowerment, social networking and interactive new media. One of the more interesting aspects for me was the notion that a ’social surplus’ has existed since the industrial revolution created [...]

FITC 2008 - Toronto - Photos

04/25/2008 01:16 am by Brooks Andrus in Misc

I was in Toronto this week for the FITC (Flash In The Can) conference. I’ll never be accused of being a professional photographer, but here are the photos that made the first Lightroom cut.

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